Sunday Sermon [Disobedience]

Hola mi gente,
Disaffected whites and their black and brown co-dependents who constantly mewl about respect for the flag (a symbol of oppression for many) and those that died for it, ironically fail to recognize and respect the lives of those who fought for freedom here in this country. 

Those were/ are freedom fighters, sparky.

Yay 'Murca.

Disobedience

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
 -- West Indian Grandmother to me

Every election cycle I am reminded of the political naiveté and apathy of Americans. Nowhere else is cynicism so deeply ingrained. I am a skeptic, I question everything, but I am no cynic. Cynicism is the disease of defeatism. And much of the United States electorate suffers from it.

We all like to point fingers. We love to talk about the stupidity of the American electorate, how we are like so much sheep. The finger pointers are the worst cynics because they’re the first to advocate voting for the “lesser of two evils,” a political strategy with catastrophic consequences. 

For me this is indicative child-like thinking. Welcome to the real world where things don’t exactly fall in place as you would like to, and where unsavory forces co-opt power! Duh! It’s also thinking that contradicts itself. Why? Because it’s the very same thinking that creates the apathy and cynicism contributing to the current political mess.

I think it’s more important to talk about how people experience the times we live in -- times of unchecked free market ideology as the fundamental principle guiding our values. The problem with free-market idolatry is that we forget that it dehumanizes people. Because increasingly radical models of efficiency propel free-market ideology in order to maximize profit, it becomes easier to consider human beings as commodities rather than individuals striving for dignity. All other human attributes, certainly the spiritual and the creative, become unimportant.

This is the underlying moral principle that parents and school boards apply when they decide that music, art, and teaching critical thinking are inessential to public education. Capitalism rationalizes the thinking that it’s a luxury to consider your own children as living, thinking beings and more efficient to see their education solely in terms of future “workforce development.”

This is a brutal cannibalization of what is most precious and most fragile about our humanity -- our children. In case you didn’t get it the first time: through education, we the protectors of children, subject our young to the brutal conditioning that makes them commodities for the market.

Then we complain that our children don’t think (in actuality, our youth are better behaved than the adults).

I knew of a barely literate woman who fought and won against her own school board so that this wouldn’t happen. She knew that teaching to a pen and paper test wasn’t education. This is where you come in. You don’t have to wait for the perfect candidate promising “hope and change,” or to “make America great again” and changing the current rigged system in one fell swoop. I have news for you: this will most likely not happen. In addition, even if such a candidate would appear, most of you would not vote for him or her. Yeah, and there’s no Santa Claus, or tooth Fairy, and your soulmate was hijacked on his/ her way to meet you. I know that’s messed up breaking this news like this to you, but somebody needs to tell you what you need to hear.

However, you can make a difference in your life. Don’t just vote, get involved. See something you don’t like? Work to change it. It doesn’t have to be a big thing. It could be something as simple as making sure the traffic light on the corner works, that the books in your library are up to date, or that the computers work. Or, it could be as big as something like causing your community to shift their thinking about education.

And when you do vote, get involved, talk to people, argue, disagree, agree, whatever, just stop bullshitting yourself and pointing fingers because all I want to know is: what the fuck are you doing to make difference in your life and community?

Some of you put more value and care in your car than you do in the protection and cultivation of your freedom and that’s the real tragedy because, while you were washing your car, they’ve co-opted your world.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

En Memoriam: Muhammad Ali

Hola mi Gente,

I was once taught that a person’s life is like a great symphony and when that symphony is over you don’t cry, you applaud the great work of art that was that person’s life. Today, the magnificent symphony of Muhammad Ali’s life has finished its final coda. Rest in peace, my friend…

The Greatest

Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?

 -- Muhammad Ali

The first time I ever saw Ali was during a nightly news cast. I was a kid, maybe eight-nine years-old. He created quite a commotion in my aunt’s household. My father’s side of the family was the assimilationist wing of our Puerto Rican clan. They were more conservative and desperately wanted to fit in -- to take a slice of the American Dream. They didn’t like what this young man, who was called Cassius Clay at the time, was doing. He was yelling out that he was the greatest, that he was too pretty, and that no man on the face of the planet could whoop his ass. I had never heard anyone call out white people like that. I mean, my father was a radical and had already started teaching me about systemic oppression, but other than that, people mostly didn’t call out white racism. At least they didn’t in 1964.

But here was this young man, unabashedly black, powerful, charismatic, and contemptuous of white supremacy. Even at that tender age, I somehow knew this was a great man. My aunts and uncles, however, were mortified. One uncle said he was a charlatan and that he would eventually get knocked out. But even I knew he was the world heavyweight champion -- a magical and powerful designation. For me, it meant that he could kick anyone’s ass. And here was a black man who wasn’t shy about it. He flaunted it.

That night, watching what everyone else thought was a nut, I would become an Ali fan for life. And he would have an influence on me that I would have never been able to predict.

Ali passed away last night, and I’m sure there will be tons of homages and they will take away his humanity by trying to whitewash his history in a rush to make him a saint. But Ali was a complicated man. He could be compassionate and cruel. His treatment of Joe Frazier -- likening him to a gorilla and an Uncle Tom -- after Frazier had helped Ali financially, was abhorrent. He could be spiritual and profane. He was a notorious womanizer, for example. In other words, Ali was a human being who stood by his convictions, but who, like the rest of us, also embodied contradictions.

I am grateful that I grew up during an era where Black and Latinx celebrities and sports stars who were also politically conscious people who used their fame and platform to advance the rights of their less fortunate brothers and sisters. I grew up with Roberto Clemente, Jim Brown, Kareem-Abdul Jabbar, John Carlos, Harry Belafonte, and so many others who were champions on and off the field. These were people who felt a sense of obligation to give back to their communities, to advance social justice for all and not just getting rich. Many paid a terrible price for being outspoken. Paul Robeson was blacklisted, for example, and many others suffered similar fates. Many others still descended into depression and died from self-medicating their pain. But these were men and women who were warriors. These were stars that seared the sky with their fire, however briefly.

Today we have Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. The former famously said that conservatives wear sneakers, and the latter didn’t even cop to his blackness. We have Sammy Sosa, who bleaches his skin, wears blue contact lenses, and denies racism in Latinx America. Today we have Snoop Dog, who is down with writing about pimps and ho’s but who just went off on the remake of Roots in a profanity-laden video. Don’t get me wrong, I ain’t hatin’, and I’m not going to tell anybody not to make money a priority, but still… I have little or no respect for these people.

It’s not that I’m looking for role models, or that celebrities have to be role models, but as a Latinx, I am conscious that who I am and how I carry myself in public has an impact on my people. I am not a compliant motherfucker, but no one person could ever walk away from one my public speaking engagements and call me ignorant. I, as they say in the vernacular, represent.

I was coming of age when the Vietnam War raged and in 1973, as the war was winding down, I was issued a draft card, which I promptly burned. I could have very easily been conscripted into a war I had no business in, but having Ali as a power of example, paved the road for me to become a conscientious objector. Too many of my brothers were coming back home from ‘Nam addicted or maimed physically and spiritually. Ali paid a steep price for his convictions. His prime years were taken away from him. We will never see Ali at his prime because of that.

So, in a very real way, our lives were connected, Ali and I. And I rejoiced when the Supreme Court decided in his favor. And I cried the night he lost to Frazier that night at Madison Square Garden. I didn’t see the fight, but I followed it on a transistor radio where a station would give updates after every round. When Ali lost to Frazier, it was more than a boxing match, it was as if a whole movement was connected to that loss.

And then Ali resurrected himself and became a champion again and I rooted for him every time. I didn’t think he could beat Foreman -- the monster with tree trunks for arms who lifted Joe Frazier off the ground with one of the most vicious punches in the history of boxing. But I rooted for him. And I was yelling as he leaned against the ropes. “Get off the ropes, Ali! Get off the fucking ropes Ali!” I yelled at the screen. Yeah, he roped-a-doped everybody that night. He totally destroyed the flag-waving, utterly clueless Foreman, who quit fighting and became a preacher after Ali tapped his ass.

And here’s the thing: yes, Ali was very popular, but the mainstream despised him. He was unapologetically and brazenly black, he was a Muslim, and he spoke straightforwardly and intelligently about white supremacy. You might not get that this weekend as the same mainstream that tore through him when he stood up to the powerful, now gushes over him. Let’s be clear, part of the reason Ali was so popular was because many people paid good money to go see him get his ass kicked. Many, many people hated Ali and what he stood for and many still do. Fuck them. Ali showed the haters they were on the wrong side of history yet again.

This post was difficult to write because I am writing about a man who in a very real way, showed me the importance of standing for my convictions even when the world is laughing at me. What many don’t understand is that standing up to white racism or any other ism, can be a lonely and very dangerous endeavor. Many have lost themselves in that cause. Ali, was a beacon for me. He showed me the way. I guess the only way now is to take Ali’s example -- his light -- and carry on.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Sunday Sermon [Spirituality & Disobedience]

Hola! Everybody…

Well, my dear Mets won yesterday and their fate rest in their own hands today. A win today guarantees them another day.

* * *

-=[ Disobedience ]=-

“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”

-- Abuelita

Every election cycle I am reminded of the political naiveté and apathy of Americans. Nowhere else is cynicism so deeply ingrained. I am a skeptic, I question everything, but I am no cynic. Cynicism is the disease of defeatism. And much of the American electorate suffers from it.

We all like to point fingers. We love to talk about the stupidity of the American electorate, how we are like so much sheep. But the very same people pointing fingers are also the ones doing jack shit about the situation. The finger pointers are the worst cynics because they’re the first to spout their disappointment about the “lesser of two evils.” They’re the first ones to whine because the slate offers candidates that don’t satisfy their preconditions for political engagement 100%.

For me this is indicative child-like thinking. Welcome to the real world where things don’t exactly fall in place as you would like to, and where unsavory forces co-opt power! Duh! It’s also thinking that contradicts itself. Why? Because it’s the very same thinking that creates the apathy and cynicism contributing to the current political mess.

Those in power want you to feel defeated; they want you to be turned off to politics because it’s easier for them to control the less than half of all eligible voters who actually vote. And if you’re going to sit there and tell me that you vote and write the occasional letter, I will tell you, sothefuckwhat?!!

Democracy is a participatory venture. If you allow someone to handle your freedom for you and that individual tramples it, then what’s to be done? (<--- rhetorical question).

Would you allow someone else to care for your car? Would allow someone else to take care of your lover’s sexual needs? If your answer to these questions is in the negative, then why would you turn over your precious freedom over to the care of a politician?

::blank stare::

We like to complain and avoid political discourse because it’s a bore -- it’s such a turn off. But who the fuck told you freedom was easy?!! You think you can sit on your ass, ignore your community and everything else that's going on, vote every four years and that equals freedom or democracy?!!

Too many of us are turned off by politics and that’s the whole scam you ma’fuccas. That’s purpose of modern American politics -- to keep you turned-off and cynical. Let me turn you on to a secret: political discourse is often not pretty nor a feel-food-kumbaya-let’s-jerk-each-other-off process. Moreover, it shouldn’t be! It’s supposed to be contentious and it’s supposed to elicit uncomfortable feelings.

This election cycle is different from past ones, however. For one, you couldn’t find two more ideologically opposed opponents than we have to day. Forget the fact that perhaps neither candidate creams your Twinkie; this is politics, not the dating game. At stake are two diametrically opposed and competing ideologies. One side (the conservatives) idolizes the market and sees it as the answer to all our problems. The other (moderately progressive) side sees that good government is the only entity able to rein in unchecked and unbridled power. One side abhors government, while the other sees government as the steward for our basic freedoms.

Make no mistake about it: those sitting on their asses and ignoring this historical moment because it makes their belly flip are the problem. That’s the problem even if those people vote.

I’m going to break my unofficial rule of keeping my blogs to no more than a one-page Word document and leave you with something you can do rather than just railing, as I have done.

The cynics’ major weapon is their complaint regarding the intelligence of the general population. After all, who else but a nation of idiots would elect an idiot to the highest office in the land?

Right?

Wrong!

I think it’s more important to talk about how people experience the times we live in -- times of unchecked free market ideology as the fundamental principle guiding our values. The problem with free-market idolatry is that we forget that it dehumanizes people. Because increasingly radical models of efficiency propel free-market ideology in order to maximize profit, it becomes easier to consider human beings as commodities rather than individuals striving for dignity. All other human attributes -- certainly the spiritual and the creative -- become unimportant.

This is the logic -- the underlying moral principle -- that even parents and school boards apply when they decide that music, art, and teaching critical thinking is extraneous to public education. It’s what rationalizes the thinking that it’s a luxury to consider your own children as living, thinking beings and more efficient to see their education solely in terms of future “workforce development.”

This is brutal -- a cannibalization of what is most precious and most fragile about our humanity -- our children. In case you didn’t get it the first time: through education, we the protectors of children, subject our young to the brutal conditioning that makes them commodities for the market.

Then we complain that our children don’t think.

I know a barely literate woman fight and win against her own school board so that this wouldn’t happen. She did it because she said that teaching to a pen and paper test wasn’t education. This is where you come in. You don’t have to wait for the perfect candidate who changes everything in one fell swoop. I have news for you: this will probably not happen. In addition, even if such a candidate would appear, most of you would not vote for him or her. There’s no Santa Claus and your soulmate was hijacked and sodomized on his/ her way to meet you. I know that’s messed up breaking this news like this to you, but somebody needs to smack you in the face.

However, you can make a difference in your life. Don’t just vote, get involved. See something you don’t like? Work to change it. It doesn’t have to be a big thing. It could be something as simple as making sure the traffic light on the corner works, that the books in your library are up to date, or that the computers work.Or, it could be as big as something like causing your community to think differently about education.

And when you do vote, get involved, talk to people, argue, disagree, agree, whatever, just stop bullshitting yourself and pointing fingers because all I want to know is: what the fuck are you doing to make difference in your life and community?

Some of you put more value and care in your car than you do in the protection of your freedom and that’s the tragedy because while you been washing your car, they’ve co-opted your world.

Love,

Eddie

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